At the beginning of my journey with chemo, my oncologist and I talked about hair loss. She assured me that with my treatment, I would experience thinning but wouldn't bald. I honestly don't know what the hell I was thinking, but for some reason I took that news as maybe I'd lose a few extra stands of hair, no big deal. Man, was I wrong. It wasn't until the end of my second round of treatment that it began to fall out in chunks. My wishful thinking had me feeling completely shocked at just how much I was losing. To give you a visual, my new hairline resembled Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, I didn't feel too pretty looking like a balding old man. That, on top of losing my once luscious eyebrows and getting chemo acne that had raided my face, scalp, and body didn't help boost my confidence. Now, I have always been fascinated with women with shaved heads. I used to look up YouTube videos of women shaving their heads and always thought that it looked really flattering and pretty badass on just about anyone. So naturally, shaving my head was on my bucket list. But that was before doing it was the most reasonable option. It took me about five weeks until I had bald spots that I couldn't cover up before I worked up the nerve to just do the damn thing. What was holding me back the most was that I was afraid of feeling like a cancer patient all the time. Obviously, I feel like a cancer patient all the time because I am one and chemo is not subtle. But I didn't want a constant reminder when I looked in the mirror of what was happening to me.
To my surprise, shaving my head didn't make me emotional in the least bit like I had expected it to. If anything, it felt freeing. Holding onto my hair for as long as possible put more stress on me than just getting rid of it completely. I no longer have to deal with pulling out chunks of hair or covering up bald spots. And the weird thing is, I feel comfortable with this new look. I no longer care about my appearance or how others may view it. I've spent years of my life wasting energy by putting far too much value into my appearance. I constantly worried about how others thought of me when they looked at me. The draw to shaving your head in spite of social norms and reclaim the definition of beauty was always appealing to me. I'll save you the long spew of statements that assure you that real beauty comes from within and shorten it to this: These bodies are not our homes. How others view our adorned physical being is utterly irrelevant. All that really matters is that we genuinely like what we see in the mirror. And I don't mean just physically, but how does your soul look? How are you wearing your compassion, your love and your purpose? Are you expressing your true self, or are you wearing what society values? It's essential that we ask ourselves why we are doing what we're doing. When I look in the mirror now, I don't see a cancer patient. I see someone who's blossoming into something that I love to be, wholeheartedly.